Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Getting from Here.. to There!

Eeeek! Nearly 10 days since I last posted, very naughty. Okay. I've been busy puttering around the homestead at True North, fixing stuff and some new construction.


First, we have a new store teleport system installed at True North. For awhile I've had some thoughts about improving signage, traffic flow and such at the main store and thought this would help. There are about 10 of these things located around at the various areas.

Now, I really did build True North to be a pleasant walkabout, so I have also provided a Site Map that people can Touch and get a copy of. So for those who still prefer to walk around the place, they have a little pictorial guidance.


Hopefully, navigating around and finding stuff is going to be a piece of cake now for True North visitors.

~*~

There's nothing like a new building project to get me absorbed and forgetting all about this blog and just about everything else!

As of now, we have an expansion to the Fountain Court, in the form of a 100 meter square upper platform - henceforth to be designated the Upper Fountain Court. I've been busy setting up some of my larger fountains there, along with the waterfalls and high water jets in their own long marble pool. It's still under construction, and I'll be adding things as time goes along, but perfectly safe to go up and explore :)

The smaller, more compact fountains/water features will remain on the ground level Fountain Court. So...how to get from here to there.. a long distance teleport of course. And those are now installed as well. The up version is sitting right beside the store teleporter at the Fountain Court - it's a little birdbath type affair with a water ball in it. Touch the water ball and awwaaaay we go!

This was hilarious - started off sitting on the thing at an impossible angle, but finally figured out the sit rotation so one is actually sitting at a dignified angle upon landing at the destination. There's a duplicate up on the Upper Fountain Court platform for returning to the ground, both suitably signed so hopefully people can figure out how to use them!

Oh, and along the way, there's a brand new fountain offering, the Stone Angel Fountain, which features a sculpted praying, kneeling angel. I've set that out on the lower Fountain Court for its SL debut!

Monday, February 9, 2009

Bagged!

Well, the lion is bagged, the fountain is done, the customer is happy with it!
Can't be more satisfied than that.

Here's the neat crouching lion I made. I did this in SculptStudio, what a fantastic tool and whoever made that is a genius!










Here it is full view at night. Very stunning.

Speaking of stunning, I got bagged from the Xstreet Forums today! LOL. I think I've posted to those Forums maybe 50 times total in over two years..if that:-) heh, never had time to post incessant commentary there or participate in the usual gab and whine, but today I posted a parcel for sale and for the second time, forgot to put FOR SALE right in the title - so since it's the second time and that means I..'repeatedly' contravened their Forum posting rules, I got suspended for seven days from their Forum. Some people really do have their heads in dark places don't you agree? Now, I can't relate this to LL recently buying out Xstreet because before the merger, old SLX was just as silly and childish as this. Maybe the merger will improve the moronism we see there that passes for posting rules in that forum.. or maybe not.

No problem I got plenty to do in the next week and am sure I will live through it!

Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Lion Hunting in SL

See? Told you I was a bit of a lazy one when it comes to keeping up this sort of stuff. I've been busy the past few days doing RL (sigh), and then also, I have a new project! Some guy investigates my Fountain Court and decides I'm the one to build him a fountain to decorate his shopping sim. So, I go and look. This place is ENORMOUS, with this huge main building that looks something like the palace of Versailles and a whole mall of shops and underground stores and BIG. EMPTY.SPACE.. right in front of his main store. That's where the fountain is going to be. And not just any fountain. I got shown a variety of photographs and samples. This is going to be a B.I.G fountain, with lots of water streams, critters, human figures if possible, lights! heh, maybe.




Here's a shot of the work-in-progress.

Did I mention, it's going to be BIG?! There's little bitty me standing on the rim to give you an idea of scale.



I decided to go for gargoyles spitting the water spouts as they are a pretty classic figure on these old world type fountains and here is a shot of the cutie I got from a sculpty-maker friend, Bethi Cattaneo (great gargoyle Bethi!)

Isn't he great? However, middle of job consultation with the prospective owner reveals he wasn't greatly keen on gargoyles, so I'm on the hunt for a decent looking lion to incorporate into this fountain, then I'll script up a menu so the owner can adjust all the water particles and sound and that should do it!

I'll try to check in regularly during my safari!